Irvine startup converts methane-based emissions into plastic

Kenton Kimmel, left, and Mark Herrema hold containers of AirCarbon pellets at their Newlight Technologies research-and-development facility in Costa Mesa. The pellets are used to manufacture plastic products, such as cellphone cases and chairs. PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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AirCarbon pellets are made at Newlight Technologies and sold to other companies that manufacture plastic products, including cellphone cases and chairs. PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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These chair and stool parts are made out of AirCarbon pellets from Newlight Technologies, an Irvine-based company with a research-and-development facility in Costa Mesa. PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Kenton Kimmel, left, and Mark Herrema hold containers of AirCarbon pellets at their Newlight Technologies research-and-development facility in Costa Mesa. The pellets are used to manufacture plastic products, such as cellphone cases and chairs. PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Irvine-based startup Newlight Technologies says it has found a way to convert methane-based emissions from dairy farms and landfills into plastic to make everyday items like mobile-phone cases and chairs.

That process has been pulled off before but has failed to gain wide adoption because of its high cost, researchers say. Newlight co-founders Mark Herrema and Kenton Kimmel claim they can do the conversion in a cost-effective way using a proprietary process developed by their team.

The result is AirCarbon, pellets they hope can help wean consumers off environmentally unfriendly plastics made of oil.

“At this point our goal is to replace plastics (made from) oil ... and we want to do it on a commodities scale,” said Herrema, 31.

Newlight's plan has managed to gain financial backing. The privately held manufacturing company reported it has raised $10 million from investors through 2012, the most recent year for which Herrema was willing to disclose figures.

Investors include lawyers, wealthy foreigners and people who back eco-friendly ventures.

A regulatory filing submitted in January 2013 said the firm planned to sell $7 million in securities; it's unclear if that fundraising round has been completed.

Newlight has signed a deal with Virgin Mobile to produce mobile-phone cases made of AirCarbon, with an anticipated release this year. The firm also has partnered with Wisconsin-based furniture company KI to make chairs. Herrema anticipates food containers, bags and electronic parts as well.

Newlight's claim to innovation centers on its production process.

The company captures carbon and oxygen molecules from methane and puts them into a reactor, where air is added. That mix then comes into contact with a biocatalyst, which pulls the carbon out of the stream and rearranges those molecules into a long chain. That becomes the end product.

What sets AirCarbon apart from other, similar production methods is the biocatalyst, which Herrema says is more efficient than that of any predecessor.

A federal environmental database shows Newlight operates a small manufacturing plant in Corona, but Herrema says the company relocated last year to a bigger facility in an undisclosed location in the state.

The company's origins go back a decade. Herrema, then a college senior at Princeton, came across a newspaper article about carbon emissions from farms.

The story made him wonder why no one had yet found a way to affordably convert methane emissions into plastic and why the world still relied so heavily on oil-based plastic.

Herrema partnered with a good friend, Kimmel, then an undergrad at Northwestern University, to research a solution.

After graduation, they worked out of their respective garages, and after getting seed funding, they started a research-and-development facility in Costa Mesa, which is still operational.

The early years were “a lot of hard work ... generally 14- to 16-hour days,” Herrema said.

Newlight is not alone in bioplastics. Companies before this have produced plastics using materials from corn to methane, with the similar goal of lessening dependence on fossil fuels for plastic products.

Some analysts say the demand for bioplastics will grow in coming years. They could prove a hit among environmentally conscious consumers, such as those who buy organic foods.

But for now the bioplastics market makes up a tiny slice, 0.3 percent, of the overall $780 billion plastics market, based on a 2012 study by Transparency Market Research, an Albany, N.Y.-based company that looks at tech and consumer-good issues.

Also, the jury is still out on bioplastics companies' marketing claims, said a Dec. 10 report from the state agency CalRecycle. “Discerning the truth of such claims is not an easy task,” the report says.

“The largest issue is there are a lot of materials coming online and a lot of research to be done,” said Wendy Harmon, supervisor of the sustainable materials research unit at CalRecycle. “We don't know what's in a lot of materials because there are a lot of proprietary realities. We don't know all the additives.”

Catherine D. Clark, professor and associate dean of Chapman's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, says Newlight's breakthrough, if it proves to be true, can be “a step forward” in the alternative-plastics discussion.

But to make a sizable difference, the company and others like it need to produce “an enormous amount,” she said. “You would be drowning the world in plastic.”

Aaron P. Esser-Kahn, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Irvine, said that ultimately “there is no magic bullet” in solving climate change, but bioplastics are worth pursuing.

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